Active clinical trials for "Autism Spectrum Disorder"

In this study, the investigators will compare effects of two types of 8-weeklong interventions: a) multimodal or b) general movement to facilitate social communication and motor skills of school-age children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Recently, the investigators have identified cortical dysfunction patterns as markers of imitation/interpersonal synchrony difficulties in children with ASD using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. In this project, the investigators want to validate whether cortical markers can determine treatment responders and if such markers are sensitive to training-related changes. Following training, the investigators expect to see a variety of behavioral and neural changes in both groups. If the study aims are achieved, the investigators will validate the use of cortical markers as a treatment response measure. This research will build evidence for the use of various movement interventions for school-age children with ASD.

Emotion recognition and regulation are necessary skills for social interaction. Disrupted development of these processes severely interferes with socio-emotional development. These difficulties are commonly reported in patients with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Conduct Disorder (CD), with the subsequent social/interpersonal difficulties. The available evidence suggest that impaired emotion regulation processes might underlie the aggressive behaviours frequently observed in both disorders. However, no study has yet investigated the presence of disorder-specific characteristics on emotion processing between these two disorders. Different impaired emotion recognition difficulties may underlie the reported emotion dysregulation. A practical implication of this is that given that both disorders have shown difficulties during emotion recognition processes, a short, computer-based intervention to improve emotion recognition might benefit both cases, even though their aetiologies might differ.

This study explores the effectiveness of two intervention programs: "Long-distance developmental behavioral intervention" and "developmental behavioral interventions" for children with autism spectrum disorder or multiple developmental delays.

In this study, 50 children between 3 and 12 years old with formally diagnosed autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and also having significant mitochondrial dysfunction will be treated for a 3 month period with the Mitochondrial Cocktail, a combination of specific nutritional supplements and metabolite intermediates (including anti-oxidants) and bio-energy substrates. A series of neurological and psychological evaluations will be conducted by trained evaluators/clinicians to evaluate both the severity and the clinical presentation of the ASD/mitochondrial dysfunction with each subject at baseline prior to treatment, after the 3 month treatment and again at 6 months, after another 3 month non-treatment period. In addition, laboratory investigations will be conducted at the same time-points to assess the mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular biomarkers thought to be associated with autistic and mitochondrial disorders. These investigations will include the analysis of samples of blood and cheek/buccal swabs collected from each child to assess select biochemical markers of ASD. The Mitochondrial Cocktail treatment will be administered at home once a day continuously for a total of 3 months. All the children in the study will be treated with the same Mitochondrial Cocktail (an open label study).

Background: - People with autism and autism spectrum disorders have problems with communication, behavior, and socializing, and many also have intellectual and developmental disabilities. The cause of autism is not known, but previous research has suggested an association between autism and immune changes in the brain. Researchers are interested in using the experimental radioactive drug (11C)PBR28, which attaches to a protein in the brain that is involved in immune changes, in positron emission tomography (PET) scanning of people with and without autism to see if there are greater immune changes in those with autism. Objectives: - To determine if positron emission tomography scanning can be used to evaluate changes in an immune system protein in the brains of people with autism. Eligibility: - Individuals between 18 and 45 years of age who have been diagnosed with either autism or autism spectrum disorders, or are healthy volunteers. Design: Participants will be screened with a physical examination and psychological examination, medical history, questionnaires about behavior and mood, and blood and urine tests. Participants will have two imaging studies of the brain at separate study visits. The first study visit will involve a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to provide a baseline image of the brain. The second study visit will involve PET scan with the radioactive chemical (11C)PBR28 to study immune system proteins in the brain. The MRI scan will take about 40 minutes, and the PET scan will take about 2 hours. Participants will have a final study visit 24 hours after the PET scan to provide a final blood sample for testing.

It's an interventional, prospective and monocentric pilot study concerning adult patients with autism without mental retardation. The primary outcome is to assess the effects of cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on the executive functions of patients with autism without mental retardation or with Asperger syndrome. The secondary outcomes are to evaluate the safety of this treatment and to evaluate its impact on impaired social communication and on restricted or repetitive behaviors.

There is a paucity of research evaluating the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach in an outpatient clinic setting in the management of feeding problems in children diagnosed with ASD. Current behavioural interventions geared to address this problem can be labour intensive and costly. The SOS approach for managing feeding problems in children has been adopted internationally. Thus establishing its effectiveness will be useful in providing evidenced based interventions for feeding difficulties in ASD.

Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) can increase social behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), although the mechanism by which this occurs remains elusive. The central goal of this project is to identify the mechanisms involved in the social-enhancing effect of dogs on children with ASD. The investigators will incorporate therapy dogs into an established evidence-based, group social skills instruction program for children with ASD, using a controlled experimental design with between- and within- subject comparisons and physiological and behavioral outcome measures. The investigators predict therapy dogs to have a specific and measurable effect on children's social behavior and that this effect is gained through identifiable mechanisms. Specifically, the investigators hypothesize that (1) an integration of therapy dogs into group social skills instruction will result in reduced stress and improved social behavior compare to traditional group instruction; (2) repeated exposure to the therapy dog across sessions will increase a child's preference for spending time with the dog and will increase the social-enhancing effects of the dog; and (3) that the therapists will experience less stress, engage in more social and affiliative behavior towards the children, and deliver higher quality instruction during sessions that include dogs. The investigators will enroll 72 children with ASD into group social skills instruction classes taught by 6 therapists. Each child will experience a 10-week, 8-student class in which either (a) the first 5 weeks will involve a therapy dog, (b) the last 5 weeks will involve the therapy dog, or (c) the class will not involve a therapy dog. The therapists will teach the courses repeatedly across the three cycles of the program with different children, rotating through each condition. Social behavior, stress behavior, heart rate, electrodermal activity, and salivary cortisol concentrations of children and therapists will be assessed and compared across conditions. The direction of the children's social behavior towards the dog and peers and the changes in quality of instruction of therapists during dog sessions compared to no-dog sessions will also be assessed. The outcomes of this research will lead to significant enhancements in current interventions for individuals with ASD.

This study will examine the effects of a school based exercise intervention programme on the behaviour and fitness levels in children with autism.

The project highlights one of the primary areas of research within the KIDDRC- language and communication. The focus is on language and communication in children with autism and minimal verbal skills (less than 20 spoken words). Remaining nonverbal past the age of 5 years has been considered a poor prognostic indicator for future language developments, yet few interventions have been developed to address this problem. The Specific Aims for this project are (1) to further investigate a multimodal intervention for school-age children with minimal verbal skills-defined as less than 20 words spontaneously spoken, signed, or selected via graphic symbol selection-and (2) to identify significant covariates associated with differential responding to the intervention. The research addresses an unmet need to promote spoken word production in children who remain essentially nonverbal well past the ages associated with speech acquisition. The project is also innovative because: a) it investigates a multimodal intervention based on principles of phonotactic probability and neighborhood density in combination with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and b) it investigates novel predictors of treatment response that are obtained through cutting-edge technologies. This intervention will have better success than past interventions because the intervention will provide increased input through speech, digitized speech and visual images and additional speech sound practice for words that are comprised of high frequency sounds in the child's repertoire. Extant speech sounds in each participant's repertoire will be identified using LENA™ digitized recordings. Vocabulary words will then be selected based on a child's speech sound repertoire and principles of word learning-words with high probability speech sound sequences will be selected and taught with either multimodal intervention or a treatment as usual condition. Responses to these interventions will be evaluated using a Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials (SMART) design. Different outcomes may be associated with individual and environmental predictors identified in our previous research. Individual predictors include verbal comprehension, imitation skills, adaptive behavior, nonverbal speech sound repertoire, and communication complexity. Communication complexity will be measured with the Communication Complexity Scale (CCS), developed by the Principal Investigator. Environmental predictors include language input to the child as measured with LENA™ recording devices. Results will determine if the multimodal intervention is more successful than treatment as usual for teaching word productions.